I pause there because it's the old argument of publishing vs printing, sure with printing you can have your book formatted, produced and it has a cover on either side in addition to another being printed should anyone want one, and therein lies the snag. Unless you've strong-armed someone into searching for it by name then it's basically lost into obscurity. It might as well be here at Fourth Perspective. Ahem, the current Fourth Perspective to be more exact.

Publishing on the other hand is big business, you need to contact agents, if they think it's the best book they've been approached with, they contact publishers, they do the math and if it turns a small profit then they're in with both feet. Big companies buy your book, they buy the rights and it's sold. You'll be given a contract for another one if it does particularly well in competition with other publishers. I happen to know for a fact that this is one option Pianoabuser hasn't explored and possibly still can depending on the rights he's given to lulu.

Now although I wish everyone the best of luck in their writing pursuits and this is no exception; however I'm going to use this publication to illustrate what I believe is the literal dead end (pun intended) of demand printing middlemen and I'm going to watch the progress of this one with morbid curiouisity as I'm sure it would outperform any publication I would release in the same way, due to social networking. I encourage you all to do the same with great interest as it represents a possible (if not viable) path you can take as spec writers and perhaps buy a book too! I'm sure it would make his day if he sold a book to someone he didn't know.